'Wedding Band' a flawed, interesting comedy from TBS

Saturday

Nov 10, 2012 at 12:01 AM

Comedy is hard. Last season brought a revival and revolution of sorts to the sitcom, ushering in "New Girl" and "2 Broke Girls," and the presumed dawn of female-centric sitcoms. This season has arrived with a spate of new comedies. With the exception of "The Mindy Project," few of them are memorable.

Comedy is hard. Last season brought a revival and revolution of sorts to the sitcom, ushering in "New Girl" and "2 Broke Girls," and the presumed dawn of female-centric sitcoms. This season has arrived with a spate of new comedies. With the exception of "The Mindy Project," few of them are memorable.

A wedding band is a natural setting for a comedy, combining the slacker wish fulfillment of "School of Rock" with the raunchy hedonism of "Wedding Crashers," "Bridesmaids" and "The Hangover." "Band" follows the four members of Mother of the Bride, an "indie" wedding band consigned to playing low- to midlevel banquet halls.

Tommy (Brian Austin Green) is the handsome singer and unmarried ladies' man likely to end up with a bridesmaid or two by the end of the night. Peter Cambor plays Eddie, a slightly henpecked suburban dad who channels his repressed id into long guitar solos. On drums, it's Eddie's brother, Barry (Derek Miller), a headbanging rock purist in the Jack Black mold.

Newcomer and bassist Stevie (Harold Perrineau) rounds out the band. He's a very accomplished session musician who misses the camaraderie of playing before a live audience with a band of brothers. Given Stevie's credentials, the guys can't understand why he associates with them. And frankly, neither do we.

"Band" has some clever concepts. The band chafes at their low place on the wedding circuit food chain. They need a big break with a slick event management company run by Roxie Rutherford, played by Melora Hardin, who was spot-on as Jan on "The Office."

Despite its promise, "Band" falls apart when it becomes obvious that it's an hourlong effort with the heart and brains of a half-hour sitcom. Like a manufactured boy band, the guys seem more like a collection of types than genuine characters. The much-missed Starz comedy "Party Down" did a better job of making us care about genuine eccentrics in the showbiz end of the service economy. And that series worked well as a half-hour comedy.

The real mystery is why TBS chose to broadcast this experiment on Saturday nights, when a large portion of its potential male audience is probably watching college football.

— "Family Guy" (9 p.m. Sunday on Fox, TV-14) celebrates its 200th episode with a clever time-travel theme. Actually, it's mostly about what happens when Brian the dog breaks Stewie's time machine, an event that makes time run backward, depicted with extended sight gags unfolding in reverse. If you think watching characters vomit backward is clever, then this show is for you.

As someone who rarely watches "Family Guy," I was struck by its consistently rancid tone of overgrown frat-boy misogyny. Adolescent jokes about female body parts and body functions comprised a high percentage of the humor.

— Cable networks keep shifting their target audience. Lifetime is clearly going after the Hallmark market with the David Hasselhoff holiday bauble "The Christmas Consultant" (8 tonight), the first of 10 Christmas movies it will premiere this season.

— In another case of cable confusion, the Science Channel celebrates science fiction with the TV special "Firefly 10th Anniversary: Browncoats Unite" (10 p.m. Sunday), a nostalgic exercise in self-congratulation featuring "Firefly" creator Joss Whedon and series writers and regulars.